9 thoughts on the entertaining Game 3 between the Celtics and Sixers
Can’t wait to see what Monday brings.
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Some Sunday thoughts the morning after one of the most entertaining Celtics games I’ve ever seen …
■ Al Horford had 13 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals, a stat line that if you were just judging from the box score without having watched the game would look … well, average. The reality is that two different stories must be told.
Horford was mediocre, and maybe worse than that, for the first three quarters, in part because he wasn’t getting the ball, and in part because he wasn’t doing anything when he had it. I actually can’t remember him playing more ineffectively. He was delivering ammo for his myopic detractors.
Turns out he was hoarding all of his meaningful plays for the end. Eleven of his points came in the fourth quarter and overtime. He scored the go-ahead basket in overtime, stole a lazy Simmons pass (would have helped if Embiid went to meet the ball), then buried two free throws with every jackal in Philadelphia trying to distract him.
To me, he’s the embodiment of this team. Poised even in frustrating moments, disciplined, and completely devoid of any quit.
■ Resident redwood Aron Baynes didn’t shoot well Saturday (3 for 7, 7 points), but he did make 1 of 2 3-point attempts. That means he’s 6 for 11 from 3 in the playoffs, after shooting just 3 for 21 from that range in the regular season and 4 for 28 in his six-year career before this. Sure looks like he’s intent on adding it to his offensive repertoire, just as Horford did in his final season in Atlanta.
■ I don’t what the limit is for Jayson Tatum, but it might be beyond the sky. He’s not going to be Larry Bird, because no one is. But he has the talent to have Paul Pierce’s career, which is ridiculous to say and yet totally true. With good health, he will be a many-time All-Star. Probably an Olympian. A potential scoring champ. Maybe even an MVP.
This feels hyperbolic, I know. It’s not. Shoot, he scored 20-plus points for the fifth straight playoff game, something not even rookie Bird achieved. He has elite skill, and something perhaps even scarcer: A total resistance to giving in. The three missed free throws in the fourth quarter and overtime could have been devastating. He wasn’t rattled.
And that trash-talk to Joel Embiid (“You got lucky. You got lucky.’’) after the Sixers center blocked enough of Tatum’s dunk attempt to resist being posterized for the second time Saturday night? That was the style of cockiness that both Bird and Pierce mastered.
■ Can you imagine how often Sixers general manager Bryan Colangelo must lament giving up Tatum and a first-rounder for Markelle Fultz this year? Especially now? It must never leave the front of his mind. “If only I hadn’t made that stupid trade. Why did I take Ainge’s call. ‘It’s great value,’ he said. ‘You can get Fultz, the next James Harden,’ he said.’ Phooey.’’
■ Can’t wait to see how Terry Rozier plays for Team USA at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. I bet Kyrie Irving improves a lot by playing against such an electric point guard in practice next year. Seriously, he’s playing like Reggie Jackson – the version that played well enough for a stretch to get a 5-year, $80 million deal from the Pistons in 2015.
■ Ben Simmons doubled his point total from Game 2 in the first minute en route to the most underwhelming 16-8-8 stat line you’ll ever see. Has anyone said that yet? Everyone? Let’s go with this, then: Ben Simmons. Australian for disappear.
■ If you were wondering what a vintage Celtics rivalry game that all of us children of the ‘80s are always nostalgically blabbering about, this was a pretty decent example. All that was missing was a rumble. And I thought that Embiid and Baynes might deliver one of those. Can’t wait to see what Monday brings.
■ If you were wondering, T.J. McConnell, that highly effective pest, went to Duquesne, which I assume to be the Duke junior varsity.
■ I don’t know when this extraordinary Celtics run ends. But it sure is fun to watch where it is going.
